This evening Esteban and I made an impulsive decision to head out for a movie. “What’s at the theater?” I asked him. “Up in the Air,” he half-shouted from the living room.

We were surprised to pull into the parking lot and find that we were the only ones there. “Oh yeah … the Vikings are playing tonight,” Esteban said. “All the more popcorn for us,” I joked.

Never before have we had an entire movie theater to ourselves. We had a blast talking back to the trailers, à la Mystery Science Theater 3000. And we laughed out loud when I made a noisy show of pulling the cellophane off our Dots.

But we barely said a word once the movie started. To me, it was poetry.

Over the past week I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what really matters, and about where the boundary lies between merely existing and truly living. In a quiet, understated way this gem of a movie touched on those very topics.

As I held Esteban’s hand in that cavernous space, I was once again reminded of what really matters to me and of how very, very lucky I’ve been. It was a perfect moment … thanks to my perfect date.